BAR HARBOR–Sean Todd of Allied Whale and College of the Atlantic (COA) will be at the Jesup Memorial Library on Thursday, April 4, at 7 p.m. to talk about marine mammals in the Gulf of Maine. He’ll share slides and information from 40 years of research by Allied Whale, and give tips on what you might see if you go out into the gulf this year.

Dr. Todd is director of the Marine Mammal Stranding Response Program at COA and teaches biology and marine science there; he is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Maine-Orono. He spent 10 years in Newfoundland as part of the Whale Disentanglement team, a group that releases large entangled whales from fishing gear. In Maine he is trained as part of a first response team that performs a similar function, coordinated by the Center for Coastal Studies, and regularly consults with the federal and state governments on disentanglement activities. Dr. Todd has worked on several projects that successfully designed alarms for fishing gear that reduce marine mammal entanglements. He also serves on the Scientific Advisory Boards of both the American Cetacean Society and The Marine Environmental Research Institute.

He has a Bachelor of Science in marine biology and oceanography from the University College of North Wales, and a Master of Science and doctoral degree in biopsychology at Memorial University of Newfoundland.